Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom.  The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim.  If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of Milton and the other wise and good men who, in spite of much that was ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their associates, stood firmly by the cause of Public Liberty.  We are not aware that the poet has been charged with personal participation in any of the blameable excesses of that time, The favourite topic of his enemies is the line of conduct which he pursued with regard to the execution of the King.  Of that celebrated proceeding we by no means approve.  Still we must say, in justice to the many eminent persons who concurred in it, and in justice more particularly to the eminent person who defended it, that nothing can be more absurd than the imputations which, for the last hundred and sixty years, it has been the fashion to cast upon the Regicides.  We have, throughout, abstained from appealing to first principles.  We will not appeal to them now.  We recur again to the parallel case of the Revolution.  What essential distinction can be drawn between the execution of the father and the deposition of the son?  What constitutional maxim is there which applies to the former and not to the latter?  The King can do no wrong.  If so, James was as innocent as Charles could have been.  The minister only ought to be responsible for the acts of the Sovereign.  If so, why not impeach Jeffreys and retain James?  The person of a king is sacred.  Was the person of James considered sacred at the Boyne?  To discharge cannon against an army in which a king is known to be posted is to approach pretty near to regicide.  Charles, too, it should always be remembered, was put to death by men who had been exasperated by the hostilities of several years, and who had never been bound to him by any other tie than that which was common to them with all their fellow-citizens.  Those who drove James from his throne, who seduced his army, who alienated his friends, who first imprisoned him in his palace, and then turned him out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages, who pursued him with fire and sword from one part of the empire to another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, and attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two daughters.  When we reflect on all these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the same persons who, on the fifth of November, thank God for wonderfully conducting his servant William, and for making all opposition fall before him until he became our King and Governor, can, on the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Royal Martyr may be visited on themselves and their children.